This is an absolute statement as division is literally caused by dividing between "sides". You get a divided country when the people within it divides each other into sides. Its never been the case when people have said "our side has caused the division". never.

That is the irony you should be finding! If you do finally see this irony you might find more nuance, but maybe more frustration and more uncertainty and confusion but less anger and possibly more empathy to the other. That's why its so easy for people to divide, as its less painful. Dividing and categorizing is how we make sense of the world, but it can be a curse too.

>> How much more divided can a country already be when the absolute democratic majority has made their decision months ago to take the shot but 30% are holding everyone back.

> Its worth remembering that division is due to the other side always.

That's an unhelpful muddying of the waters. If some clear minority is undermining a popular policy, especially if it's doing so for irrational reasons or out of spite, you can definitely point to that minority as the cause of the division.

There are a lot of people who have already had covid and now have antibodies, who were also never in, and continue not to be in, a risky demographic. The risk for these people is very, very low already.

On top of that, the vaccine is not entirely without risk. There have been many reports of side effects, specifically heart issues in young males. There have been some deaths.

The counterargument might be, "okay, that may be technically true, but the risk is very, very low." And the people who do not want the vaccine, who are not in a risky demographic, might say in reply to you: exactly, that's the same thing we're saying about the virus.

> I think assuming that it's out of "spite" is an example of not realizing how "your side" might be causing the division.

With "out of spite," I was specifically referring to things like "owning the libs."

> There are a lot of people who have already had covid and now have antibodies, who were also never in, and continue not to be in, a risky demographic. The risk for these people is very, very low already.

So? Getting a vaccine isn't only about managing personal risk. Also, from what I understand natural immunity is often weaker than vaccine-induced immunity, and "hybrid immunity" (natural + vaccine) is superior to either alone.

> On top of that, the vaccine is not entirely without risk. There have been many reports of side effects, specifically heart issues in young males. There have been some deaths.

Is that risk higher than that from COVID infection? No: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25133462-800-myocardi....

This is a good example of an irrational reason: I'm scared of a choice that has a very small chance of producing myocarditis, so instead I'll make a choice that has a greater chance of producing myocarditis.

This isn't true.

"Healthy boys may be more likely to be admitted to hospital with a rare side-effect of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine that causes inflammation of the heart than with Covid itself, US researchers claim."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...

You shouldn't read a pithy comment as a complete statement on any manner, and mine certainly indicated there's more complexity that wasn't being covered.

That said, in this case, the COVID anti-vaxers are the source of this division.

It’s the difference between small c conservatives who have reasonable concerns about how affirmative action might worsen the problem and flaming racists who think they’re fundamentally superior.

In that case I’ve got news for you. But first, I need you to stay strong: President Kennedy was….

Except! And this is a big "except": when doing the thing the majority wants would violate the civil rights of the minority. The problem (in the US, at least; I can't speak for Germany) is that the minority is trying to paint vaccination as a civil rights issue, essentially. I can see the argument, but it all feels a bit hypocritical, as I expect most of the minority who are complaining now were vaccinated (by mandate) against other diseases when they entered public school as children (and vaccinate their children by mandate before enrolling them in school). And while there is still some resistance to even that in some quarters, it is nowhere near the size of the resistance toward COVID vaccinations.

And I don't think taking vaccines (usually as a child) by mandate in the past changes the ethics of it.

I think it's fair for there to be consequences to refusing the vaccine. Your work may decide they don't want to expose their staff to an unvaccinated human... so you may lose your job. Government may decide that the risk of sitting inside with someone unvaccinated is too high so you may not be welcome at certain businesses. Maybe you have to wear a mask when others don't.

That doesn't cross a line to me, but saying "you absolutely must take this vaccine or we're going to use the force of government to make you" does.

Looking at things through that framework is how we end up with controlled substances, anti-smoking laws, DUI laws, and a whole host of other things.

One's rights in the US usually stop at the point where they impact the ability of people around you to live their life without undue interference.

Now you know why Philosophy professors teach this problem in Philosophy 101.

I'm extremely uncomfortable with granting a novel coronavirus a gigantic reservoir of freely available incubators to infect and try out new ways to use the human body for its own goals, all the while having a way to largely prevent it. The concept of "individual rights" as you present it here is at odds with best practices learned from epidemiology. Is that in-and-of-itself a troublesome fact? Absolutely.

Yet on the left we have many who anti-anti-vax while pro-abortion. I don’t understand the consistency of that position.

Then you should be extremely uncomfortable with vaccine mandates, because this is exactly what mass vaccination is doing. Since none of the vaccines prevent people from getting COVID or passing it on to others, the vaccines are creating an evolutionary environment where there is high selection pressure for the virus to evolve variants that resist the vaccines. Mandating vaccines just makes that worse.

I'm not sure this is true, but even if it is, this...

> variants, therefore, mostly arise among unvaccinated.

...does not follow from it. The key thing driving evolution of variants is not number of replications but selective pressure. Selective pressure is much larger in a vaccinated individual than an unvaccinated individual (or at least an unvaccinated individual that has not had COVID and does not have natural immunity).

No, it isn't, because science cannot make value judgments. Epidemiology can tell you things like: if you do A, B will happen; if you do C, D will happen; etc. That's all "best practices" based on epidemiology or any other science can amount to. But no amount of science can tell you whether doing A to make B happen, or doing C to make D happen, is worth the cost of doing those things or the other side effects they will have. Those are value judgments, and value judgments should not be forced on people.

> The evolution of a novel coronavirus that is both highly infectious and deadly must be avoided at all costs.

Barring any reasonable objection to this (of which I can think of none), the ball is in science's court to prescribe a course of action. If that course of action is mandatory vaccination, then so be it.

Then you haven't thought very hard. "At all costs" is way, way, way too strong. We already have viruses that are much more infectious and deadly than SARS-CoV-2, for example Ebola, and we have not taken this "at all costs" attitude towards them. We expend some effort towards fighting and containing them, but only in proportion, since there are so many other things we also need to expend effort towards doing.

> the ball is in science's court to prescribe a course of action

No, it isn't. Choosing a course of action requires attaching value to different possible future states of affairs. Science cannot do that. It requires value judgments, and science cannot make value judgments.

To take your example, science can to some extent tell you what will happen if you impose mandatory vaccination or if you don't--although since much of what needs to be predicted involves second, third, fourth, and higher order effects and includes various aspects of human psychology and free choice that are not at all well understood scientifically, science's ability to make accurate predictions about such outcomes is limited. But science cannot tell you which of those two possible states of affairs is to be preferred, all things considered.

You're absolutely right about that but there is a cost-benefit analysis here. If we don't want the government to be able to track our every move (to make sure that the unvaccinated don't violate the public interest) then it's simpler and probably more democratic to just mandate vaccination.

I don't buy this phrasing, or the rule. Even if read with best intentions. I can't even imagine how ridiculously bad US would be if it was actually ruled based on what 70% of the population wants.

I am not even joking. I think you may want to rethink your argument.

That being said, if you declare any consideration of the actual policies to be off limits for supposedly being subjective, you won’t ever be able to make any decision.

Specifically, in this case, vaccinations are safe & beneficial. And even if governments are subject to elections, and their powers are subject to frustration even by minorities opposing them, reality is not. A principled argument cannot be made in the abstract, leaving the wisdom of vaccinations open. Opponents pretend that it is possible because they do not stand a chance on those merits, and seek to instead shift the debate to “freedom vs. safety” or whatever safe in the knowledge that it is impossible to argue for either of those conflicting values to ever ‘win’.

What most people expect is a vaccine that works as it was said it would, and isn't in a quagmire of censorship and profiteering. I think those are very real concerns that have not, and will not be addressed - and so, you will never get everyone on board.

We've done a huge scale test -- it thankfully has worked -- and I'm not sure what evidence you are looking for at this point.

It mostly feels like the unvaccinated at this point are 1) cowards, 2) selfish, or 3) believe in some sort of voodoo. Not sure which is worse honestly.

They may have over-exaggerated and come up with bullshit counter-narratives, but they were right about the core of the issue: we can't trust leaders who lie all the time.

This is applicable to every issue we face as a society, but most people ignore most major issues most of the time. There's something else going on with this pandemic and the vaccines. It's been extremely politicized, in part due to the social/political context it started in. It's sad that we can't all come together to figure out the best course of action. Instead, wearing or not wearing a mask, for example, has become an overtly political act.

Also, let's say everyone in the U.S. had gotten vaccinated as early as possible, by last July or thereabouts, what would the impact of that have been? Things were opening back up, and then the Delta wave hit. Perhaps if 90%+ had been vaccinated we wouldn't have had to shut back down again (although it wasn't really a shutdown this time, since pretty much everything is still open).

I'm all ears for a civilized discussion, but until we can agree on some epistemic framework (or narrative) we're not going anywhere except where the current ruling class pushes us.

So for the situation in general: if enough people are less divisive, perhaps a less divided country can occur.

As for the "other side" - this is what democracy is about. So if the elected representatives and majority of the nation are for it, then that's the decision made.

To the fascists: Get the fuck out of our business, and maybe we can coexist peacefully. Or don’t, and see what happens.

In Germany, the subject of the story, support for a general mandate was in the high 50s a month ago and around 70% now. Opposition is a rapidly shrinking minority.

a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

They're more reliable than your feels, for instance.

> There is nothing “hesitant” about it - we see exactly what is going on, and we will never accept this tyranny.

Come on. Throw around the word "tyranny" like that, and it will lose its meaning. It's like the boy who cried wolf.

> If you insist on testing your odds with this, you will only cause unimaginable suffering, and then lose.

What now? A civil war over vaccine mandates, let alone one with the anti-vaxers winning, is a delusional fantasy.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hopefully you never find out how hard people fight when they know that they are fighting pure evil.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The problem of course is that once one side lost a fairly held election, the vocal minority went right to violence (see Jan 6). And now violence is acceptable political discourse on one side.

And now it seems like one political party is worse than Russia -- who assassinates it's political dissidents.

I'm pretty sure if you ask around, no patriots wanted Steve Scalise, Ronald Reagan, JFK, Malcolm X, Gabbi Giffords, etc to have been shot.

> It is the Virus that creates a horrible situation

And it is people refusing to get vaccinated that greatly exacerbates this horrible situation. What you've said is misleading.

> We are in this mess together and everyone is spreading the virus, vaccinated or not

Vaccinated people spread the virus less and go to the hospital less. What you've said is misleading.

I recently learned that viral loads is actually the same between vaccinated and unvaccinated people who test positive for COVID19. That's not technically the same thing as the rate of spread, but it is really first and foremost the severity of the disease that the vaccines help with.

(Agree with everything else.)

In fact the buckets with 3 holes are now encouraged to walk around the room.

But what you describe is majoritarianism. It is a form of democracy but a very weak form. For a lot of people, who are from minority groups, it is indistinguishable from totalitarianism.

Why do 30% of people refuse to get vaccinated? (here in Aotearoa it is 5%). Something is happening, people are getting left behind, in vast numbers. Forcing them to comply is probably a cure worse than the disease - even a disease like COVID

Honest epidemiologists have been warning about this risk since 2020, and more forcefully when confirmed by early vax results in 2021. But many people are still on the warpath against the unvaxed, as if that can make a difference.

Well, it can for the unvaxed themselves – winning them a less-severe case.

But every vaxed person is going to be exposed to, and have mild cases of, COVID – via waning immunity & multiplying variants. There is no net increase in protection from harassing the last ~15% (a more honest count of hardcore holdouts) into a vax they don't want. (Most of them have probably had COVID already, or soon will, giving them an immunity just as good as vaccination.)

- 1: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

If you sincerely think we can make COVID extinct you might want to do some more research into real science and less propaganda.

Immunity from prior-infection was worse than vaccination at protecting people from Delta.[1]

1. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

>In this review, observational studies appeared to show protection to be higher following infection.

"The body of evidence for infection-induced immunity is more limited than that for vaccine-induced immunity in terms of the quality of evidence... There are insufficient data to extend the findings related to infection-induced immunity at this time to persons with very mild or asymptomatic infection or children."

We literally don't have the evidence needed to say with certainty that infection (of all levels of severity) provides "an immunity just as good as vaccination."

The data only suggests that people that are severely affected by COVID may have higher peak antibody titers. It's a huge gamble to play with yourself and the people around you.

First you said:

>Immunity from prior-infection was worse than vaccination at protecting people from Delta.[1]

Now you are saying :

>We literally don't have the evidence needed to say with certainty that infection (of all levels of severity) provides "an immunity just as good as vaccination."

Meanwhile, all the data coming out of countries with centralized covid tracking suggests natural immunity is as good or better.

Here is another link if you are interested: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

Reviewing health data for 2.5 million Israelis, It found:

>SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021

>Conclusions This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

It’s also an outlier result, as larger analyses from Israel suggest longer & stronger protection from infection.

What we can say confidently is that both the vax & prior infection provide some future protection, ut both fade against re-infection fairly fast, while remaining helpful against severity.

Also more generally: the CDC has not, in this pandemic, proven very reliable in its reporting, recommendations, or weighing/updating of evidence, & its choice of what to report & emphasize has been highly compromised by shifting political pressures. I think their highlighting of this result, over evidence suggesting otherwise, is suspect - more a reflection of them wanting to boost the vax campaign than an honest assessment of all relevant scientific evidence.

And I say that as someone vaccinated.

> I agree that everybody should get vaccinated. Let's make this virus extinct.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/17/health/covid-deer-animals/ind...

You going to vaccinate all the animals too?

Or just dogmatically stick to the "unvaccinated people are selfish" because it best fits your political world view - damn the science?

Want to make this virus irrelevant? If Omicron is as mild as the doctors in South Africa are reporting then here is our path to herd immunity. Which is going to happen no matter what governments fuss and fume about. Even New Zealand finally gave up on their ridiculous quarantine strategy.

A) let’s all get a couple of shots to reduce our risk of death, serious illness, and make it less likely that other people get sick, not to mention making it less likely that new variants will emerge by making transmission harder

or

B) let’s have no vaccinations and let the virus sort it out, like we did with, say, the 1918 flu? Or polio, measles, or smallpox?

or

C) let people get vaccinated or not, it’s their business, but putting societal pressure on them is overbearing and eventually pointless

That of those options we should choose either B or C? Because B is how we dealt with illnesses until we had vaccinations to make them harder to get and less deadly. Then we started…vaccinating people. And now measles is still a thing, but no one worries about it, except that cases are going up because people aren’t getting vaccinated. So B seems like a bad plan, because we tried that and it sucked, and then we did A with measles and things got a lot better.

C is certainly a lot more personal liberty-oriented, which I get the appeal of, but society is fundamentally about giving up some amount of individual liberty in exchange for shared and communal benefits. C is actually what is happening in some places with measles vaccinations, where individuals say, “I don’t need to be vaccinated because herd immunity will save me”, which not only means that (despite claiming personal liberty) those people are relying on the vaccinated people to protect them, but that they’re willing to put others at risk (because vaccines aren’t perfect) in exchange for their individual liberty. This seems like C is a pretty raw deal for the liberty and rights of the people who would rather not get infected by, say, measles. Or Covid.

B and C both seem like bad plans. A seems pretty good, but I realize you’re not going to be convinced of that. B is pretty indefensible, I don’t think anyone would argue we should just let Covid run through the world and kill millions and millions more people. Or maybe you do, I don’t know. Seems bad.

But with C, the only way you can argue it’s not selfish to look after your own preferences is if you believe that the outcomes of option A, B, and C are the same. That it doesn’t matter - the same amount of people will die, and the same amount of people will get infected, and the same amount of people will permanently lose their sense of taste or smell, and the same amount of people will end up in the hospital. That fundamentally the outcomes of all three scenarios are identical. But there’s no way that’s the case, right? It just doesn’t make sense.

So if there IS a difference, then A is everyone doing as much as reasonably possible to make things better, B is everyone giving up and accepting whatever happens, and C is valuing your interests above the opportunity to help others. That’s the definition of selfishness.

> ...

> and C is valuing your interests above the opportunity to help others. That’s the definition of selfishness.

This, I think, highlights the fundamental blind spot in reasoning of many who pushes the vax or other measures to 100% "uptake". What do the people think will happen once somebody submits to the pressure? Masked and vaxed and fine and dandy? Quite the opposite, I believe. The resistance in the remaining population is not at the rational level, it is very visceral, primal, fight-or-flight feeling. Even though, I think, it was largely provoked by the initial torrent of equally irrational measures, it is not something that is going to change. Submitting to pressure doesn't mean forgetting or forgiving. The solid foundation is being laid for a very broken society for a generation to come. The internal trust in society is as shaken as never before. Society with 5-10% of people broken, bitter and vengeful is not healthy. The fallout is going to be very bad, in unexpected way. Cruel and unusual.

Sure, you may say it is selfishness. It is not rational selfishness though. As I said, it is a visceral reaction which is very hard to explain, to put into words, therefore all you hear is "we don't want it". It is sort of a mental condition, and pushing through to the end won't cure that condition, only make it worse. Such condition is nothing to be proud of, but punitive correctional measures aren't known to work against diseases, mental included. Even criminals are not prosecuted if suspected to be in acute mental condition.

I would hope the nature of the resistance is properly recognised and not vilified. After all, we've complied with all the past vaccine "soft-mandates" for our children and ourselves, but always thought that generous exemption provisions were very good! Letting people make choices without pushing them into the corner is beneficial for society. I always thought the society's capacity for compassion was bigger than my own. Unfortunately, it is not what transpired.

At this moment I'd be ok with increased insurance premiums, testing regime for travel and high-risk settings, tax surcharge or even mandatory community service as alternative to vax. Something we can rationally discuss. "Bodily autonomy" - face masks included - is simply not something I can engage with rationally.

But what is the end game?

The argument that you make is odd, though, which seems to be that people have been so pushed around by these horrible, unreasonable asks that they have a “visceral fight-or-flight” response and hence have a “mental condition” that prevents them from adapting - and not accepting that demonstrates a lack of compassion.

That argument, for what it’s worth, has been trotted out to justify everything from segregation, to fighting gay rights, to objecting to seat belts. Just because people don’t like something they find objectionable doesn’t make them irrational. Saying they are robs them of their agency as humans, and also conveniently obviates them of their responsibility to their community.

“But what is the end game?”

To get to where almost everyone is vaccinated, which is where we are with measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, typhoid, etc. It’s not that complicated.

“ I always thought the society's capacity for compassion was bigger than my own.”

Man, me too. If you had asked me in 2019 if there would be a controversy about adding one more vaccination to the roster of vaccines we give almost everyone (and invest billions in encouraging and distributing), I would have said, “no way - in most of the world, most people see vaccines as something that’s important to help themselves and their community “. In 1947 there was a smallpox outbreak in NYC and millions of people showed up to get vaccinated because it was the right thing to do to protect their community. Their compassion was for others.

To be clear, I don’t think people who don’t want to get vaccinated are monsters or evil. They don’t need to be vilified. No, they’re more in the realm of the person in the community who once in a while has a drink too many and drives home when they shouldnt - probably nothing bad will happen, but it shows a real lack of personal responsibility for their impact on others.

> That argument, for what it’s worth, has been trotted out to justify everything ...

It may be a tired argument, but it doesn't make it false. Sometimes people really do have deep convictions they cannot be rationalized from. Looks like I do, and I'm not happy about it. Only it was never a problem before covid. I was brought up in the spirit of never asking for help or claiming any deficiency until you absolutely, positively, completely unable to handle the situation on your own. Also you must be sure that who you ask is able and willing to provide such help. I thought society progressed enough to tolerate conscientious objection of sorts. Turns out I was wrong. I struggled to keep up and cried for help, first time in my life - and received a good lesson to never ask for compassion again.

> Personal choices have impacts.

They certainly do. I just disagree that it is purely personal. The other side absolves itself from any consequences of the choice pushed upon individual, while being very happy to trump on them if the "natural" impact of "inferior" choice is not bad enough.

> people have been so pushed around by these horrible, unreasonable asks

I haven't said that. Some may very well be reasonable, but it is very hard to see in the pile of punitive-only measures.

Well, at least I have tried to explain how some people, myself included, see and feel in the situation. I'm getting more hints of my inability to communicate this, and nobody in a position to influence the measures gives any consideration to it. This is why I stand with my belief that the side-effect of "where almost everyone is vaccinated" will be not what these people are expecting, in a cruel and unusual way.

Aka unreasonable. Which sort of makes the point. But also - it’s tough for me to be civil when your argument is, “why isn’t anyone taking my feelings into account?”, when that has literally never been the standard for anything related to a common good. I don’t care how you feel about being allowed to drive drunk, because it’s dangerous to others. I don’t care if you don’t want to allow minorities to live in your neighborhood, they have the right to live wherever they want. And I don’t care if you don’t want to get one more vaccination on top of the 5+ we require for work and/or school, it is part of participating in a functional society.

If no one hears you “crying out for help”, think of how the people whose lives have been affected by this disease feel, knowing that there are people who COULD be helping but don’t want to.

My point is not that anyone should care how I feel, in particular. I only give it out here, on a semi-anonymous forum, never IRL.

The point is, quite the sizeable proportion of people feel like that, and it is a pain for them which they won't forget or forgive, even if they choose to submit to demands. In fact, many voluntarily vaccinated people feel exactly the same, for them cooperation with any future government initiatives is out of question now. It doesn't invalidate the pain of those catching or dying from the disease, it just another pain in it's own right.

"Common good" cannot be built on pain, history is littered with unsuccessful attempts. Governments all around the world are choosing to ignore this (proving them incompetent) for some reason, and in doing so they may find themselves very unpleasantly surprised. Unless this is the end game they are looking for (proving them evil), but that would be too much of a conspiracy to suggest.

Also smoking is a terrible example - we tax cigarettes highly to discourage smoking because it’s a drag on our medical system. We ban the act of smoking in a wide variety of locations because it has an impact on other peoples health. Some buildings even disallow people to smoke in their private homes, and some cities disallow smoking in offices. We put restrictions on almost every aspect of smoking because it doesn’t only affect the smoker.

Smoking sections in restaurants have all but disappeared, taxes have increased on cigarettes dramatically, warning labels have been placed on boxes/cartons, and so on.

The process has been to try and remove second-hand smoke from those areas where it might affect non-smokers. Traveling abroad to China and Hong Kong a couple years ago it was almost unbearable dealing with people smoking everywhere.

Similar to how as a non-smoker my health risk is non-negligible being exposed to second-hand smoke, so too is my health at risk by unvaccinated individuals running around with higher viral loads increasing the chance and rate of breakthrough infections, and also increased risk of future mutations that could potentially bring about another pandemic.

Very clearly with smoking we've been moving towards a system where you can make whatever health choices you want as long as you aren't impacting the health of others - why should it be any different for vaccines of any kind?

I think we have long established that just me existing is not something people are willing to tolerate. Hell, just my presence impacts the life of others; sometimes even in a negative way. There is even a system to deal with issues like that. It is called civil law.

But why do we stop at smoking? Why aren't we going after farts and methane. After all, did you know that methane gas poisoning can cause death? Surely, if we researched it a little more, we would maybe find out that it causes cancer of something.

No smoking in schools, no smoking in restaurants, no smoking in workplaces, no smoking in public buildings.

Is that not similar to Germany disallowing unvaccinated (and not naturally immune) from non-essential indoor shopping/leisure activities? Or requiring testing for employees who are not vaccinated/naturally immune?

Not if they saturate the health system and you need it for something else.

Also, obesity "epidemic" is slow, therefore easy to manage, compared to the covid epidemic that is governed by power laws.

Finally, there is no vaccine against obesity.

And if many countries can mandate curfews, lockdowns, mandatory quarantenes etc., why not ban sugary foods, sugary drinks, fast food, etc.?

I mean.. I'm against any sort of bans, but generally, more people die from being fat than from covid itself.... if every life matters, why no theirs?

I don’t think any expert nor any public health department is working with the goal of eradication in mind. So we should acknowledge the fact that these vaccines will probably not eradicate COVID. We will have people getting sick from COVID and we will have more COVID variants for the foreseeable future. Even after most people have been thoroughly vaccinated. And given the slow global spread of vaccines we will also probably see more lockdown measures to slow the spread of the virus beyond the current vaccine capabilities.

Now that said, remember that with the vaccines:

> we can make the virus largely irrelevant in terms of its impact on peoples lives. We can reduce the number of people who suffer long term consequences, the number of deaths, and the load on hospitals. We can make it harder for new, more dangerous, variants to arise.

I believe I speak for many when I say, "I have no idea what the experts' have in mind" (and that's not a good thing).

So they're trying hard to get everyone vaccinated - a noble goal, perhaps, as our current roster of vaccines diminish symptoms and greatly reduce hospitalization and fatality rates. But..."Stop the spread, get vaccinated"...what? Like the parent said, all of the currently-approved intramuscular Covid-19 vaccines have proven to have a negligible effect on transmission rate.

Early on, experts probably made an educated guess or wish that these vaccines would be sterilizing and started information campaigns on this premise. When this turned out to be not true, their "Stop the spread, get vaccinated" became "You unvaccinated are the problem, you are holding us back, and you will be locked down immediately". Rather than address their mistake, rather than open up transparently, they doubled down on the lie. Not a good way to build trust.

Multiple studies show that vaccinated people have lower transmission than unvaccinated.

> In studies conducted before the emergence of the Delta variant, data from multiple studies in different countries suggested that people vaccinated with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines who develop COVID-19 generally have a lower viral load than unvaccinated people.(157, 165-169) This observation may indicate reduced transmissibility, as viral load has been identified as a key driver of transmission.(170) Studies from multiple countries found significantly reduced likelihood of transmission to household contacts from people infected with SARS-CoV-2 who were previously vaccinated for COVID-19.(171-176) For the Delta variant, early data indicate vaccinated and unvaccinated persons infected with Delta have similar levels of viral RNA and culturable virus detected, indicating that some vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 may be able to transmit the virus to others.(163, 164, 177-180) However, other studies have shown a more rapid decline in viral RNA and culturable virus in fully vaccinated people (96, 177, 180-182). One study observed that Delta infection in fully vaccinated persons was associated with significantly less transmission to contacts than persons who were unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.(181) Together, these studies suggest that vaccinated people who become infected with Delta have potential to be less infectious than infected unvaccinated people.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95565-8

We could all dance the Darth Vader after 20 years of Covid even with vaccination. But we certainly will without.

Er... what now?

[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/indiana-covid-boy-cancer-treatment-...

You are totally correct that obesity doesn't spread exponentially, but it exponentially increases your risk of having a bad time with this disease. This will sound harsh, but I'm not really a fan of locking down young healthy people and forcing them to put their lives on pause because so much of America can't go for a run or get in the squat rack. The conversation no one wants to have right now, because were so steeped in arguing over what vaccines - mandated or not - can or cannot do, is one about how we actually get Americans to shed some weight and eat better.

Ironically, closing the gyms "because covid" will make this problem worse.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-roughl...

Vaccines do help with that, tremendously.

Reminds me of 2 weeks to flatten the curve. Yet here we are. Why all the sudden are we at risk of clogging the healthcare system with some areas hitting 70%+ adult vaccination rates? Germany already has given out 124,401,062 doses of the vaccine. All I ever see is the goalposts being moved with this stuff.

I have taken the vaccine, but I am hesitant about mandates and vaccine passports.

These are estimates. They are sometimes (often!) wrong. Sometimes they're wrong because the problem was underestimated. Sometimes they are wrong for political reasons.

Yes, "flattening the curve" took more than 2 weeks. Big deal. Doing so did absolutely reduce pressure on ICUs and saved many lives. And hell, if everyone had actually followed all the mandates and guidelines at the time, maybe it would have only taken two weeks. But people don't, and it's always hard to gauge how many people will refuse to cooperate, and in what ways, and exactly what effect that will have.

The reason the goalposts are moving is because this isn't a well-defined game with strictly-set rules. The virus doesn't care about our rules or projections. If it mutates, and the new variant does better against our vaccines, then... yes, the goalposts will move. Our utter failure to get high vaccination rates in poorer countries is likely a big cause of the new variants. It's all well and good to be sitting in a highly-vaccinated city in the first world, but all it takes is one person to fly in from somewhere with a new variant, and you're hosed.

If we look at the numbers for Germany they're now getting 60 thousand cases per day, which is three times more than any previous period.

More cases mean more people in hospitals. The situation was bad last winter, it can get worse fast. Now, of course many are vaccinated, so that drops the likelihood of hospitalization, but unfortunately for them 30% of people are still unvaccinated. So I can understand why they're nervous.

The thing about the vaccine also is that the effects drop with time unfortunately, so people need boosters. I've already gotten 3 shots and expect there will be more.

If we aren't to keep the world in lockdown, we need people to be out and about, but vaccinated, so this can truly be treated like a few bad flu years in a row.

Until the virus hopefully mutates towards a less severe thing and we can stop talking about it.

The procedure is benign. Describing it as irreversible is technically true but practically it's scaremongering.

And it's for the sake of the people around you. Your society. So they don't die waiting for their healthcare services to unclog. Edit: And it's also obviously for the sake of the person getting vaccinated, let's not forget that :)

>...fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts. Host–virus interactions early in infection may shape the entire viral trajectory.

Source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

>Although vaccines remain highly effective at preventing severe disease and deaths from COVID-19, our findings suggest that vaccination is not sufficient to prevent transmission of the delta variant in household settings with prolonged exposures.

Which is what we're talking about here, preventing serious cases.

>...fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts. Host–virus interactions early in infection may shape the entire viral trajectory.

Source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

That benefit is hardly "at best". That's a fantastic intermediate step. Why is it decried as horrible just because it's not the final solution to the problem?

From listening to nurses and doctors, I get the impression that most people in hospitals with Covid-issues lately are vaccinated; and I trust real people with real experiences over authorities with agendas.

I read some statistics over that the other day. It is correct when looking only at hospital patients.

The explanation is that most who need hospital care come from a risk group. And risk groups are fully vaccinated by over 90% (here). So you end up with high absolute numbers of vaccinated hospital patients.

If you look at a somewhat comparable group of people, chances to need hospital care are manyfold for the unvaccinated. It's true for higher risk groups and for lower risk groups.

Vaccinations are not perfect protection against anything, but they reduce risk by a high factor.

Isn't that the excuse people use to harass anyone who doesn't feel like being experimented on for profit?

Look it up instead of asking me for proof, while you yourself are restating hearsay originating from who knows where.

I can understand hesitation to get vaccinated, but I'd like to ask those same people if they take any other medicine at all and if they have read the pamphlet that comes with those.

Also I'd like to ask if they are fine with getting a completely alien and known harmful substance into their body, the substance we call Coronavirus.

The MRNAs are non-sterilizing, as are many vaccines. They may reduce symptoms, reduce infections, and reduce transmission, but they are not considered a sterilizing vaccine.

Secondly, coronaviruses mutate much faster than smallpox, and have other hard to deal with stuff like asymptomatic transmission.

The only diseases we ever eradicated were polio and smallpox. I think we got rid of the guinea worm too. Out of all the many many diseases we have fought over the years.

[0]https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-dev...

The vaccines we have are non-sterilizing - and my understanding is that the reason is mostly because we needed at least something very quickly and sterilizing vaccines for respiratory virus are harder to research. It is not inherent property of the technology as far as I know.

Sterilizing vaccines for COVID seem to be theoretically possible. "Natural" infection generates stronger immune response on mucus membranes as well as deep inside the body and that provides higher protection against infection. There's no reason why that wouldn't be possible to replicate using a vaccine. But nobody succeeded at making one yet, so we'll have to see if it's practical.

Not all viruses are the same, and neither are all vaccines.

If you believe most virologists the only realistic scenario is that the virus becomes endemic, similar to most flu strains or other human corona viruses (which makes vaccination even more important!).

If you get infected with COVID there are far more options than "Sit around with a thumb up your ass until you have to be hospitalized and put on a ventilator".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAHi3lX3oGM

Every person spreading the "horse dewormer" nonsense should be charged with manslaughter. The politicization of this whole thing is beyond a fiasco.

Give everyone 2 months of salary, and 2 months of food. Nationalize food production for a month, give everyone shelf stable terrible food, the same crap that the majority of the anti-vaxxers have been hoarding for decades.

Its like a pretend apocalypse. They should LOVE it.

And large reservoirs of COVID would remain in wild animals, and other countries, and groups (like the elites & their children, or remote communities) that can't practically be forced to comply.

A perfect lockdown would stop a human-only pandemic immediately by stopping all transmission.

Unfortunately, this virus infect other animals as well. Good luck locking them down.

>>> Give everyone 2 months of salary, and 2 months of food. Nationalize food production for a month, give everyone shelf stable terrible food, the same crap that the majority of the anti-vaxxers have been hoarding for decades.

> Utter insanity. Who told you a "real" lockdown would stop the virus? Where did you get this "fact" from?

It stands to reason. An extreme lockdown as described will cause a virus to go extinct provided: 1) animal reservoirs are insignificant, 2) the immune system can clear the virus within the lockdown time, and 3) people actually comply.

Exceptions to 2 & 3 can likely be dealt if the lockdown is paired with and intensive testing and contact tracing program.

All of these things are likely true, because China and other countries have actually been successful at maintaining a Covid-zero policy (at great cost).

Let's just switch to Universal Basic Income and enforce total lockdown to kill COVID and then to save the environment!

Enough of those pesky tourists as well with their polluting jets!

\s because people may, sadly, took it seriously

The only way to reliably stop this from being an ongoing pandemic is measures that reduce the R-value below 1 in a long-term manner, like mass vaccinations.

The mortality under 70 is pretty low.

https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus...

In Germany we have a constitution that protects all human's right equally. If there's good reasons why you can't receive a vaccination, I'm pretty sure nobody can force you. Not even the state. Go to your doctor to get an attest that exempts you from the mandatory vaccination. Nothing easier than that in Germany.

And again: You are just speculating. Nobody knows if a vaccine mandate leaves people behind it tropes. You cannot know it, because it hasn't happened.

I'd rather make decisions based on facts than just speculating about hypotheticals.

If Germany's constitution allows vaccine mandates, then your insistence that it protects all human's rights will be of little comfort to the people who are forced to take the vaccination without their consent and in violation of their conscience.

At best you are saying "Having control over what medical treatments are done to you is not a human right", and at worst you are saying "Antivaxers aren't human". Either way, you are putting too much trust in a system that claims to protect human rights, and totalitarians generally manage to find a way to twist the law to justify what they are doing, whether the excuse is "military necessity", "medical necessity", or something else.

Your imagination got the better of you here - nobody will be forced to vaccinate, especially not without their consent. Similar to how nobody comes to your car and forces you to wear a seatbelt.

Germany's constitution is quite clear about this, for apparent, historic reasons.

I'm not _forcing_ you give me $100, not at all. It's just that if you _choose_ not to give me $100 I will continue to stand in your way and prevent you front getting inside.

An obligation that is not enforced is not an obligation. A decision that only stays voluntarily as long as everybody complies was never voluntarily in the first place.

I'm usually a very phlegmatic, law-abiding citizen but man, where does this love for newspeak and doublethink come from, all of the sudden?

There is no rational reason not be be vaccinated. Anyone who refuses deliberately chooses to endanger themselves and everyone around them, and ultimately the majority is paying the price for the reckless behaviour of a minority in more than one way.

Mandatory vaccinations are an instrument that has been used effectively and repeatedly throughout history. It has also held up in courts including in the US where SCOTUS has argued that individual liberty is not absolute and finds its limits where its exercise can harm the health and safety of others.

Triage is happening and people with better chances of survival (e.g. everyone vaccinated) are getting the beds. So already "antivaxers are treated less like humans".

We know mask mandates, vaccines, and other medical interventions save lives, reduce transmission, reduce hospitalizations, reduce long term symptoms and long covid rates, and reduce deaths, and they may even reduce mutation rates. So the choice to vaccinate, that you paint as one of conscience and consent don't just affect the individual making the choice, but all the people around them.

I mean... we let people smoke and die due to that... why not due to covid too?

The vaccines are too weak to actually achieve herd immunity, so pretty much everyone will get in contact with covid, sooner or later,... some will beat it by themselves and some will, sadly, die.

If people want to take the risk of covid, why force them? I got vaccinated and I don't care if some people don't want to do it.

But I prefer reality, and I haven's seen any definitive proof that's the case yet, quite the contrary.

It looks to me like the more we vaccinate, the sicker we get.

Sources?

I have been unable to find an official/authoritative source on vaccination rates among ICU patients with cursory search. Help for clearing this aspect up is appreciated!

This is really bad since vaccinated people can be infected and shed the virus without showing symptoms! You are far more likely to be unknowingly exposed to the virus from a vaccinated person.

The rest of your assertions are rather baseless and unfounded propaganda not backed up by science in the least.

If the Omicron variant is indeed as mild as the doctors in South Africa are reporting, Omicron is the path to herd immunity. Especially since COVID is carried by animals. You going to vaccinate every animal any human could come in contact with too?

This whole "you are affecting all the people around them" is the biggest lie of all and the biggest pile of utter bull $h!t in this whole fiasco.

Read the book "Ordinary men" (by Christopher R. Browning). Normal people, like you and me, had "very good" reason to do what they did when they did it.

I've received lots of vaccinations in my lifetime, but I ask the question, who decides what the "good reason" is for vaccinating every eligible human?

We know the Covid vaccines aren't 100% effective in stopping spread, or getting ill, but for the sake of argument, let's assume the vaccines are 100% safe and effective.

The reason I don't think it should be mandated is because it sets a precedent for future mandates where the political climate may be different.

Everyone should have the right to choose what happens to their body. Unfortunately that may mean people make stupid decisions (forgoing life-saving treatment, or possibly even making others sick), it's infuriating at times, but the alternative is far worse.

The same argument applies to free speech and personal privacy. Taking away those rights, for what most would say is "obviously the right thing to do" may be all well and good in today's political climate. But it sets a precedent for the future, in which the political climate may be a lot different.

Obviously, this is just my opinion :)

An immigrant friend went homeless after Berlin required places like hotels & accommodation houses to be 2g (tested or recovered) only.

He got his vaccine as he wasn’t against them in the first place, he was just a wreck less dumb person. I would argue that other measures would have been less catastrophic while still “punishing” the individual.

Isn’t this an example of being left behind on a similar policy? If I misunderstood you, then my apologies.

I don't think so.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110475

Vaccination was most strongly associated with an elevated risk of myocarditis (risk ratio, 3.24; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.55 to 12.44; risk difference, 2.7 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 1.0 to 4.6)

SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with a substantially increased risk of myocarditis (risk ratio, 18.28; 95% CI, 3.95 to 25.12; risk difference, 11.0 events per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 5.6 to 15.8)

Here's the core problem - unrealistic expectations. Even the CDC has backed off from the whole "make the virus extinct" mantra; they haven't spouted it for over a year now. Which is a good thing - it was utterly ridiculous from day one.

This virus isn't going away. It is carried by animals. You going to vaccinate every animal that we all come in contact with? Ha! You are not going to shelter in place or vaccinate away this virus. We had better figure out how to coexist with it in a rational and reasonable manner.

The good news with the Omicron variant there are no reported hospitalizations in South Africa. So it's more virulent, but less bad. Here is the perfect path to herd immunity - a variant that people can get a mild infection from and have stronger natural immunity to than the vax would give, as well as broader protection to variants. Actually any protection to variants would be an improvement over the current vax - there has be zero confirmation from the CDC or vax makers that the vax provides any protection against Delta, let alone Omicron. All they make are vague promises about it reducing the reaction. Big deal! If the reporting by South African doctors is correct and Omicron is as mild as they have seen then what exactly is the vax doing? Nothing - except exposing you needlessly to potential side effects.

BTW that Omicron is more virulent but less bad is totally unsurprising to anyone familiar with viruses and who wasn't politically motivated or shamed to pushing the ridiculous narratives around COVID right now; this is totally expected behavior as viruses mature in the wild and was predicted by many virologists last year. Virologists who were then quickly derided as quacks, truthers and worse since they dared to challenge the widely accepted groupthink. Same crap that happened with the lab leak, changing stances on masks, ignoring of massive spike in reports in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and more - hot takes that turned out to be VERY wrong later but amazingly the corrections never get the same amount of publicity as the initial propaganda.

There are lots of hospitalisations, they are ramping up drastically. See SA regional hospital data.

> totally unsurprising to anyone familiar with viruses

Actually no human virus has ever evolved through selection pressure to become less virulent. This is just a (convenient to the deniers) myth.

Lab leak is just as fanciful as it has ever been, masking advice was updated as soon as we knew better, vaccines have been proven very safe.

I am going to accept that you are commenting in good faith. I would ask you to consider your sources, your influences, and the ever rising toll of sickness and death caused not least by the kind of misinformation you are propagating.

Here's an actual doctor in South Africa reporting the opposite of what you are claiming: https://twitter.com/KoenSwinkels/status/1465906474270531589/...

Traditional vaccines have been proven to be very safe, mRNA vaccines are entirely different technology that has been in development for over 40 years and not deployed - widely or otherwise - until now. If mRNA vaccines make so much sense than why have none been brought through clinical trials before this "crises"? If it's so safe then why is the approved vaccine nowhere to be found, but all vaccine being pushed still the vax that is only under the EUA? Why did the FDA violate their own protocol and not revoke the EUA as soon as the approved vaccine was approved?

As for misinformation, sickness and death - have you looked at the dramatic spike in reports in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)?

Since you are so keen on stamping out misinformation - do you think people who already had COVID should still be forced to be vaccinated? If so, under what rational?

Since you want to talk sickness, who's going to apologize to this mom for advocating a perfectly healthy 14 year old get the vaccine when the possibilities of him having a major reaction to COVID are infinitesimal - yet now he will likely face heart problems for the next decade if not the rest of his life: https://imgur.com/a/NeonlLV

Who's going to apologize to all the families for family members killed by secondary effects to the sustained overreaction to COVID in the face of much better information? Sweden would like to enter the chat.

Just curious since you are basically insulting *I'm* causing sickness and death, since it's becoming more and more apparent vax apologists such as yourself are the real ones causing more problems than you are solving.

Could you please recommend me more reading material on that particular point? Thank you.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7044e1.htm

For the next secondary analysis, aORs for hospitalizations that occurred before and during SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant predominance (June–September 2021) were compared, beginning on the date the Delta variant accounted for >50% of sequenced isolates in each medical facility’s state (2).

...

In this multistate analysis of hospitalizations for COVID-19–like illness among adults aged ≥18 years during January–September 2021 whose previous infection or vaccination occurred 90–179 days earlier, the adjusted odds of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 were higher among unvaccinated and previously infected patients than among those who were fully vaccinated with 2 doses of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine without previous documentation of a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Secondary analyses that did not adjust for time since infection or vaccination or adjusted time since infection or vaccination differently as well as before and during Delta variant predominance produced similar results.

...

In this U.S.-based epidemiologic analysis of patients hospitalized with COVID-19–like illness whose previous infection or vaccination occurred 90–179 days earlier, vaccine-induced immunity was more protective than infection-induced immunity against laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, including during a period of Delta variant predominance.

I think you mean more transmissible, less virulent.

It's an interesting question and there is lots of debate in Germany at the moment as to why. Some factors are:

* Germany did very well during the pandemic so people didn't experience a Bergamo or Madrid moment

* Germany has a strong esoteric / anthroposophical movement (Steiner, Waldorf et al.)

* Federalism: Vaccination rates vary a lot by state

The right answers are:

1. They don't trust the medical authorities to be honest about the risks.

2. They don't feel a need for it because they're at low risk of COVID and know it.

3. They don't believe it will change anything.

The right answers, but for the wrong question ;)

Not disagreeing with you, but parent was asking why is Germany so bad relative to their European peers.

1. The recommendation to take the vaccine goes exactly against anything the doctors said pre-covid. Before covid, nobody would recommend you to take a vaccine against something you are not in a risk group for, and double doses and boosters were unheard of. This makes me suspicious, and I don't think that is unreasonable. 2. You get really sick from the second dose of the vaccine, which also is not normal, you are not supposed to get sick from vaccines, you are supposed to take them to avoid getting sick

So the whole vaccination situation is something that's new and confusing, why do what my doctor always said to not do? Why get sick from vaccines, aren't they supposed to stop you from getting sick? Why double and triple vaccines?

>double doses and boosters were unheard of Completely wrong. Gardasil, the HPV vaccine is given in two doses. The Chickenpox vaccination is I think three doses? Same with hepatitis B. You need a tetanus booster every 10 or so years.

>You get really sick from the second dose of the vaccine Uhhhh myself, my partner, my kids and nearly everyone I know and work with has had two doses of the Pfizer covid vax. No-one I know has gotten really sick from either dose. A bit of a headache and sore arm and perhaps feeling a bit blah for half a day after is the worst I've heard of.

Yeah but you didn't have mRNA, which makes you really sick.

And I picked the flu vax just as an example. I should have instead questioned your statement that I wasn't in a risk group. Everyone is at risk from covid, admitedly some much more than others.

According to this data: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/covid-pandemic-mort... I'm at a 0.4% risk of dying of Covid, and a 8% risk of hospitalization. Those aren't small risks, the vaccine reduces that approximately 10x so clearly its a good idea

Actually, I've just thought of another good example - Whooping cough. Adults are actually at no risk whatsoever of this, but small babies are at severe risk so parents are reccommended to get this vaccination to prevent them passing on what is a very mild or unnoticeable disease for them to their babies. Oh and when I looked up info on this and the vaccine, yes you should get booster shots for this as well https://www.health.gov.au/health-topics/whooping-cough-pertu...

And, uhh yes Pfizer, which was the main covid vaccine used in Australia, is a mRNA vaccine.

- If you really want, go ahead, but it is mostly a waste

- The vaccine is unlikely to help much because it only partially protects against few variants out of hundreds in circulation

- They do not generally recommend flu vax outside of risk groups (small kids, elderly people and medical workers)

- Vaccine is generally safe, but not completely without risks.

If the vaccine was sterilizing - i.e. vaccinated people wouldn't be contagious and spread it symptomatically or asymptomatically - then every vaccination would count. But given the current state vaccination is just going to reduce symptoms and ultimately reduce hospital capacity. Anyone who is in danger (or scared) of Covid can get vaccinated. There's little point in vaccinating children (or even non-consenting adults, although this depends on hospital capacity).

Also, that chart is based on averages. Unless you have co-morbidities (you're fat, have diabetes, heart condition, whatever) the risk is way lower.

You're a 48 year old male? If you're healthy the risks are way lower than the chart indicates (off the top of my head maybe 1% hospitalization, <0.1% death?).

And if you're healthy and think about what kind of people are included in the remaining 99% you should feel quite safe.

Double doses and boosters are very common in standard vaccination practice. Your kids should be getting them.

They aren’t perfect.

Not at all. How many people experience long-term crippling effects from the flu?

BTW, the care we are taking has reduced the number of flu cases too.

And even if it were just a flu for you, there’s a 3% chance each person you infect will die a horrible death after a month of agony.

COVID is still new, while flu has been with us for millenia. Give it time and opportunities and it'll perfect itself.

3% is too high.

What? That's not a universal truth at all. Anecdotally just a few people I know felt a little run down for a day, but everyone else (myself included) experience felt zero ill effects

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577

I bet you can't name one vaccine that has had a "long term consequence" that has emerged more than a few months after the vaccine was administered. It just doesn't happen.

Its a bit like saying I've just developed an upset stomach, from that dodgy curry I ate last year.

Or are you just sharing an opinion?

Imagine the horrific consequences if Pandemrix had been mandated!

However, this does prove my point: The people who developed narcolepsy after this vaccine started showing symptoms one to two months after their vaccine.

Then why are the hospitals filling up with vaccinated people?

How about developing cancer from whatever?

https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

The moment the press starts spreading disinformation, it starts to be detrimental to democracy and should be treated as that.

The text of the First Amendment does not contain this or any other justification for itself. And rightfully so I think; such a right does not require utilitarian justification.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

I simply don't understand why one person needs to undergo a medical procedure to enable someone else to experience the safe conditions they want. These vaccines don't even grant immunity in the traditional sense (see CDC's revision of definitions here) - all the vaccines do is move things from one nonzero probability of risk to another nonzero probability of risk. If people are SO worried about their health, they need to behave honestly and either quarantine themselves or wear a full body protective hazmat suit everywhere. But requiring others to get a vaccine to attain some arbitrary risk ratio just doesn't make sense.

Why do we take away the right to drive a car (free movement) from those who are intoxicated? All that banning of drunk driving does is it slightly decreases a nonzero probability of risk. The risk to be hurt by an intoxicated driver is very low, and the risk to die is even lower. If people are really concerned about street safety, and traffic is inherently dangerous as it is, they should just stay at home.

Me neither, I think it's completely unreasonable.

You don’t have the right to expose others to a deadly disease. If you undergo the “medical procedure” (an injection, not surgery, brain transplant or anything complicated, expensive or risky) you reduce risks for you and others, as well as you avoid the risk of using my taxes to pay for additional medical care you wouldn’t need if you just had the very minor inconvenience of two injections.

With that reasoning, you are always exposing others to some indirect risk by any activity you do, everything must be banned. There's a certain limit to what is considered within your direct control and can be considered your personal responsibility.

Vaccines are helping with that.

Uhm, we do this all the time: licensing, seat belts, etc. Welcome to modern society.

We weigh up the probabilities.

Which is why it is a good idea to get vaccinated.

My younger son (14 years old) is not vaccinated. He will be banned from entering shops, probably from playing tennis, and our family will not be allowed to meet other families this winter.

The reason why he is not vaccinated is that in Germany he would get the same amount of vaccine as a 150kg person. In the UK and Sweden they only give one dose to minors, not so in Germany. He is healthy, and does a lot of sports, so for him I see a higher risk from the vaccine (myocarditis) than from COVID-19.

Also, the federal vaccination commission (Stiko) has explicitly demanded that there should be no social discrimination for minors based on their vaccination status as a condition for recommending the vaccines for 12 to 17 year olds. We trusted this recommendation.

If you have so little faith that the vaccine can protect you, then why did you take it and why are you advocating others should be forced to?

Also even if 100% of all humans were to take it you do realize that vaccinated people can carry and spread it (asymptomatically, no less) and that animals can carry and spread it too?

Thinking that unvaccinated people violate anyone's rights is utterly ridiculous; it's far more selfish than what your ilk love to accuse those who don't want to take the vaccine of.

This virus is NOT going away. So people might as well get that pipe dream out of their heads right now. It's time to stop letting emotion drive these conversations and get rational as well as realistic.

This question has a really simple and well-known answer, so if you are unaware of the basics, maybe you should educate yourself first? Vaccine does not offer 100% protection to the individual who takes it, but, according to the scientific research, it significantly reduces: a) the risk to get infected, b) the risk of infecting others, c) the risk of complications or death. Only first of those risks is related to the freedom of personal choice, other two impact public health and public is in their right to restrict personal freedom for those, who do not comply - because chances that people may die are increasing. Yes, vaccine is not the ultimate protection. More lockdowns will be necessary and we will have to wear masks for few years more. Virus will not go away. But 5-10 million people are already dead and we must take all chances to prevent as many deaths as possible, until it mutates to the point where it is no more dangerous than a flu. If this means that some libertarians and anti-vaxxers will be pissed off, well, majority of people in many countries apparently does not care.

There is a point at which people cannot be made to do things. That point is not fixed and depends on a lot of things (obviously).

The question is is this going to push many people past that point?

Yeah, please please come here and find a way to "unloose" these people, I'm out of clue. We have a lot of failures here in Germany that surface, everything is too slow, from bad organization to corruption (like most western democracies), behind in digitalization, behind in taking the right measures, slow decisions even after 2 years into this pandemic situation.. true, a big chance to clear up and maybe hopefully do better in the future.

But those people (the last 10-20% radical idiotic percent that drives the rest forward)? I really start hating my country and fellow citizens, so many spoiled brats living in prosperity, complaining about everything, believing in total bullshit, it is unbelievable. If you attempt your best in an open and honest discussion, you are called a liar with the first word that comes out of your mouth....

> Want a war? That’s what you’re going to get if you persist with this paranoid hypochondriac fascism.

That's a perfect description for those people, not the vaccination, phew..if we get a war it will be by further catering to the far right. And btw, most of these people who go demoing right now (except the few violent far right ones that are under them), I bet most have never been to a real demonstration in their lives - now standing up for their personal party freedom while limiting the freedom of everyone else - again and again.

And btw please.. everyone who gets triggered by the word "lockdown" get your facts right first - there are lockdowns and there are lockdowns. We had very strict lockdowns over the last year in most our neighbors (e.g. France, Italy, Spain) - fines when you went out on the street at the wrong times .. we in Germany were up to that once close, though I believe noone here ever got fined for anything.

What we discuss and have as "lockdown" right now in Germany is actually just the "lockdown of the unvaccinated" - means 2G in shops that are not essential - oh yeah, poor unvaccinated crowd cannot go Christmas shopping, while health personal is crying for help, ERs and intensive cares are filling up, and a newspaper already appealed to stop driving unless totally necessary, because of injury risk.

Yeah sorry, I'm totally fed up :( Read too much on twitter and also here again, and I feel also a little bad and dizzy. Have been waiting 1h in the cold and another hour inside today to get my booster shot - bad organized Germany, again, but not complaining today! I'm happy to see so many people still trying to do their littlest part to relieve the health care workers and try to help get the hospitals some space for people that really need it for reasons that couldn't be avoided. And a little proud to be part of it - In that sense, the dizzyness is appreciated and better than a Feierabendbeer, the injected chip is working, the 5G in my brain is getting activated and well welcomed. gn8

So what do you think getting 100% of humans is going to do, especially since the virus is carried and transmitted by animals too? You aren't going to wipe it out.

And for the vast majority of the population - especially those under 60 and without any co-morbidities the chances of COVID requiring hospitalization, let alone ICU admission is negligible. At worst equal to the flu. Yes, for the vulnerable COVID is not good - but that's hardly unique to COVID too.

So not sure where YOU get off casting aspersions that anyone who doesn't get the vax is selfish - there is ZERO to back that up and rhetoric such as this is the yellow star of David crap reborn in modern clothing.

Also the pressure on the health care system would be much lower then - alternatively, if everyone who is unvaccinated would just sign off that he doesn't want hospital treatment and stays home I would be almost fine as well (still annoyed by the innocent victims they maybe infect..).

> especially those under 60 and without any co-morbidities the chances of COVID requiring hospitalization, let alone ICU admission is negligible.

So wrong, please look again at our numbers, small percentage on big numbers is unfortunately still too much.

> anyone who doesn't get the vax is selfish

Here, in this situation, with all we know, it currently 100% is, 110% YES.

I can't believe anybody seriously believes that. In addition to the fact that different expers have quoted different figures, and prominent health officials have admitted to deliberately lying about the percentage needed, you have to realize that many of the parameters that go into such a model still have huge error bars.

If the quoted figure was '85%, plus or minus 10%, has a 95% chance of granting herd immunity', I _might_ take it seriously. I think that's still overstating the confidence we have.

They're mandating vaccines so that they can continue to provide all their citizens with this human right.

Sometimes rights clash, which is why you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater despite having the right to freedom of speech.

An individual's right to do X on principle can absolutely be overruled by the right for a larger group of people to continue living on this earth.

The decision about yelling fire in a crowded theater originates from Schenck v. United States, in which the Supreme Court decided it's OK for the US Government to suppress anti-draft protests; consider if you wish to build arguments on this foundation.

> They're mandating vaccines so that they can continue to provide all their citizens with this human right.

This is exactly why those people are wrong. True rights never clash.

Including the vaccinated, who can still spread it, so I guess we must lock them up since they are already vaccinated, and we can't stop them from spreading the virus otherwise.

Saying that people don't have a right to spread the virus is disingenuous. The reality is that people don't have a right to be free from sickness or death. You can only make personal decisions about risk you are willing to take. To force other people to do things to make you safe is not a right.

True, but when vaxxeds spread to other people who are vaccinated, nobody dies. It’s the unvaccinated who endanger themselves (their problem) and others (society’s problem) with their unwillingness to help. We should isolate the unvaccinated for their own protection.

> Saying that people don't have a right to spread the virus is disingenuous.

Try to deliberately infect someone with a disease such as AIDS, HPV, or smallpox and let me know what the law says about that.

> You can only make personal decisions about risk you are willing to take.

You can’t, for instance, drink and drive. It’s not your personal decision the moment your decision endangers others.

> To force other people to do things to make you safe is not a right.

Someone who insists in DUI and kills people regularly will end up being forced to live in a prison.

Are they going to advocate that we capture and vaccinate all the animals that humans can or could come in contact with?

It's utterly preposterous - but anyone that doesn't agree with them are the irrational ones. Propaganda and emotions running amok.

So, I strongly suggest people get vaccinated so, at least, they don’t infect the bear that eats them.

May I recommend you read article 2(2) of the German constitution at your convenience.

https://openjur.de/u/2347742.html

Wikipedia says there are cases pending in German supreme court regarding a recent measles vaccination mandate; the court has so far refused to issue a preliminary injunction against the mandate and left the question open for decision in the main trial (see paragraph 18).

https://openjur.de/u/2201133.html

At this point you're borderline rage-baiting / trolling, which isn't super welcome here.

Germany could theoretically disallow unvaccinated people access to their ICUs without trampling any rights. It would get messy.

Germans aren't fond of messy solutions. They are a very practical people, and they've decided to take a more practical approach (vaccine mandates) that might respect individual rights less, but also results in much less death for those very individuals and the rest of society.

Throughout history, making people second-class citizens has never resulted in anything good. If you can name one instance in history where making people second-class citizens was a net benefit, I will eat my words.

* My right to speak freely and say cruel things vs the right of someone else to live a peaceful life free of terror.

* The right of a privacy for a politician vs the right of the pubic to know about their character & personal life.

* The right of a capitalist to buy out all the competition vs the right of the consumer to have choice.

There are many people who decline to be vaccinated who are irrational (and I think anyone over 60 who does is just not looking at their risks right). But you won’t convince them by forcing their hand or making obviously untrue statements.

They can get it and spread it to others who are more vulnerable. Unbelievable that you and others still don't know the most basic facts about diseases, even two years into a pandemic. Please get educated and stop spreading misinformation.

Except that it doesn’t look like the vaccine is doing much to prevent transmissions. The UK has been near 90% vaccinated since this summer, and despite that it experiences a high number of cases, of the same order of magnitude than pre-vaccination. And it seems to be the same in other high vaccination countries.

Also if you are vulnerable and unvaccinated, you own the risk.

The only thing vaccines seem to be efficient at is reducing hospitalisations, which at the end of the day is what matters.

People getting vaccinated are taking "one for the team" and at the same time "looking out for number one". That's the beauty of it, really: aligned incentives.

All vaccinations have some level of risk. If you are surrounded by unvaccinated, your risk of not getting the vaccine outweighs the risk of catching the disease from the herd. In this instance you have aligned incentives.

However, if you are in a entirely vaccinated population, your risk profile changes, and it is now possible for your incentives to become unaligned with "the team", or at least more blurry.

Unfortunately the average antivaxer's mental model is probably not so well defined that they realise is what they have been doing. I would not be surprised if the majority of them don't realise/agree that they've been selfishly coasting on the coat-tails of the crowd with other vaccines/diseases, and therefore they have trouble realising their currently "successful" strategy is not going to work so well this time round.

I got vaccinated to protect myself. I am aware that even with 100% vaccination rates, sooner or later i will get in contact with covid (and/or i probably already have), and the vaccine is protecting only me. I am not afraid of the unvaccinated, and I don't care if they choose a greater risk, it's their life, and their choice.

Not at all and I can turn that argument back: I know non-vaccinated people who stay at home and "evil" fully vaccinated people who go out. It is a fact that vaccinated people can still carry and transmit the virus.

It is also a fact that in the EU 40 to 60% of all ICU beds are filled with fully vaccinated people (40% in Spain atm but the number is going up, 50% in Belgium, 60% in the Netherlands, for example).

So evil, fully vaccinated (like me btw), people going out, spreading the virus, then falling ill and ending up on an ICU bed.

Do you really want to shame people like that? Because if we play that game, then I'll shame the vaccinated people who still have a social life: they do spread the virus.

How did these evil fully vaccinated people who are on ICU bed get the virus? Who did they give it too? Why didn't they stay at home / live less of a social life? They're putting an unnecessary burden on the healthcare system...

Countries like Gibraltar with 100% vaccination rate still just experienced a wave.

Same in Israel, one of the most vaccinated country on earth.

> Besides, it's in everyone's best interest to get vaccinated.

That is not clear at all. Why not lock down hard, very hard, the old and those known at risk why letting the virus circulate among the healthy population: this, and that is a known fact, creates a much better immunity than the one conferred by the "vaccine". The studies published showed 12x less risk to catch the Delta variant if you had had Covid before compared to someone who just had the shots.

If anything: maybe that that "vaccine" which still let people carry and spread the virus is part of the problem.

The problem is the old and those at risk have been sold a lie by politicians and big pharma: that by getting the vaccine they'd be safe. So they let their guards down and now they're fully vaccinated... on ICU beds.

Though correct, this is a dumb statistic used to peddle antivax propaganda. As vaccination rates rise, this number also rises.

If 100% of people were vaccinated, 100% of all Covid ICU patients would be vaccinated.

Spain has quite high vaccination rates, which is why this ratio is so high there.

What percentage of ICU beds are treating strictly Covid patients? My understanding is that it's <50% most of the year. I don't have a source. Does anyone?

~73% of people in Netherlands are fully vaccinated.

If this is all ICU beds (and not just Covid ICU patients) - then you would expect 73% of x% (where x is greater than 50%) to be fully vaccinated patients.

Therefore, you're still in a world where unvaccinated patients are 9-10x more likely to be in an ICU bed. But you get this "data point" anti-vax people can spread that "It's actually the vaccinated people clogging up the beds!!"

Data is tricky, especially with something like this.

The UK data also shows that all age groups are proportionately far more likely to be admitted to an ICU bed if unvaccinated. I don't think the majority of under 40 ICU COVID admissions who were unvaccinated were unvaccinated because they were already expected to die soon.

The UK data also shows that all age groups are proportionately far more likely to be admitted to an ICU bed if unvaccinated. I don't think the majority of under 40s admitted to ICUs who were unvaccinated were unvaccinated because they were already expected to die soon.

It is absolutely crazy how easy it was for our incompetent politicians to blame people WHO ARE NOT EVEN BREAKING ANY LAWS for their own disastrous communication (just remember those "mask are actually bad for you" talking points when there weren't any) and overall pandemic management.

They constantly lied to us on every step of the way and now they're surprised that some people don't trust them?

I’m sorry to say this but that is just plain populist. I do agree that pandemic management surely wasn’t optimal, but insinuating malice is simply misplaced. The situation was chaotic because a pandemic is chaotic. Lots of federal offices that are known for being low-intensity workplaces - such as public health offices - suddenly had more work due than in the last 40 years combined. Politicians without any experience in managing world-scale catastrophes had to perform, often 80+ hours per week. International supply chains collapsed, decades of ridiculous IT politics started showing. Due to Germany‘s federalism, states had way too much sovereignty for way too long into the crisis. Public health institutions, healthcare professionals, Pharma companies - all had different opinions on what might be the best next step. Masks were not going to be deliverable in the quantities required to provide for the entire population. At some point, a decision had to be made to reserve contingencies for hospitals.

Solutions to all these problems may be obvious in hindsight, but I ask for a little respect to all the people that had to find them in a dynamic, completely unknown environment. Lots of things went smooth as fuck, you just didn’t notice because you took them for granted. We’re talking about humans after all.

Maybe initially - but at this point?

Shall we talk about Sweden?

How about this South African doctors utter shock to Omicron by many western governments? https://twitter.com/KoenSwinkels/status/1465906474270531589

Yeah, at this point anyone overdramatizing COVID is doing so for purely political and financial purposes at this point.

If Omicron is indeed as mild as it appears then this is the path to heard immunity - not the vaccine. That would cut off the non-liable money train to big pharma though; in that context the disproportional response to omicron makes a hell of a lot more sense. The real threat it presents is to the perpetual vax/booster gravy train.

No, it's a fact. I understand why they were lying about things, e.g. the usefulness of masks, but that doesn't make it less dishonest or patronizing.

You simply can't say one thing today, the opposite tomorrow and still expect people to just believe you the day after that.

And please don't buy into that "it's all new to us" narrative. Not knowing how to handle things is not a license to just make stuff up.

And if you still think you have to, at least remain consistent about it.

And if you can't do that either, at least don't complain when people don't trust you, anymore.

And if you have to complain about people not trusting you, anymore, at least don't blame them for the consequences OF YOUR OWN CLUSTERFUCK.

Were people really asked to cast their vote by vaccinating themselves?

It's an entirely separate issue that has nothing to do with ICU beds, vaccines and a pandemic.

- "Herd immunity" is only a secondary desired trait for the vaccine. The primary one should be that the individual that gets the vaccine will have a stronger immune system and less likely to be severely sick. I got it for my own benefit, not because I want to be nice to others.

- The vaccine was sold as a one-shot thing. I think that the vaccine is safe enough for its risks to outweighs the benefits if it was only once. If periodic boosters start getting required, the calculus changes.

- Where does it stop? Let's not forget that the whole thing with lockdowns was to flatten the curve and to avoid the health care system to collapse. These should've been seen as temporary measures so that we could improve the healthcare system so that it could respond properly. Instead, it has become a perma-threat with no end in sight.

No. Some are OK with the risk.

> this is a democracy

If all the possible choices for the vote are supported by all the parties. If there are unacceptable choices, this is just a dictatorship of the majority.

I noticed that some have an interpretation of democracy as "the majority shall dominate you". They seem to be forgetful of the principle of "costitutionalism": all powers shall be preliminary limited through a social contract.

Just one example of one kid screwed up for life now: https://imgur.com/SNMhlBg

There was ZERO reason for an otherwise healthy 14 year old to get the vaccine. Too bad this mom found out the hard way.

How long until the unvaccinated are more than the vaccinated? 18 months?

What happens when they are the majority and ban all vaccines?

But hey, if you disagree with that last bit and think hospital staffing is everyone's problem, be aware that this sword cuts in both directions. It actually makes it super easy to argue for banning vaccines. Here's the argument they'll use:

1. Vaccines aren't entirely safe. They can cause blood clots, strokes, heart attacks and many other kinds of injury.

2. The injured end up in hospital, consuming medical system capacity which takes it away from the people who opted out and didn't take the vaccines. Possibly for life, in some cases.

3. This is selfish because many of the people who took vaccines and got injured are young and weren't at any meaningful risk of COVID. They did it to themselves despite knowing there were risks, because they were incorrectly scared, or authoritarian, or whatever, but now society has to take care of them anyway.

4. And in addition the unvaccinated are now almost all recovered, and they have natural immunity for life. The vaccinated on the other hand, are now dependent on endless booster shots which not only injure new people on every round but are also are extremely expensive and taxing on the healthcare provisioning system, meaning less resources available for everyone else. Proof: the UK has just started cancelling operations to free up healthcare resources for booster shots!

Thus, the vaccinated are a drain on the healthcare system and should have their freedom to choose endless boosters removed - or at the very least, they should be forced to pay for them themselves (and any subsequent healthcare issues they experience).

You may not like the above argument (I don't!) but it is not fundamentally different to the ones being deployed in this thread. And if the unvaccinated become the majority, as may easily happen given that vaccinated people will constantly be joining them as their status expires, then nothing in theory stops such an argument being made (although in reality the public health establishment would never go along with it).

These arguments are, fundamentally, not sound. And there are big difference between vaccine mandates, no mandates and bans. For mandates and bans to stand up in courts and democratic review, even as the ruling party you need to show evidence for your position since you'll force it onto other people. For the effectiveness of vaccines, we have that evidence, as well as a collapsing medical system. For a ban, we don't. So unless people with anti-vax beliefs completely abandon democratic principles (which I hope they wouldn't in those numbers) they could not institute a ban. In any case, my comment was aimed at highlighting this distinction: a vaccine mandate, like a lockdown, is/was justified by the conditions, not just dictatorial abuse, no matter how much those that don't like it scream about it. A ban would not. So it's a completely different thing to institute a ban at 60 % anti vax sentiment vs. a mandate at 60% evidence based decision making

And I'm assuming we still have the same rule of law as now and they don't just make shit up, because I'm modeling my fellow humans as having a different (in this case, empirically and from a risk calculus wrong) perspective, not as evil. So they can't abandon democratic principles. Vaccine mandates are coming as a last resort now due to exactly those principles

From US perspective...

What I find ironic is:

President Biden, Anthony Fauci, White House Press Secretary all said they would "never mandate vaccinations" and it's "not the place of the federal government to mandate vaccinations" and that they believe "it doesn't have the authority to do so anyway"...

And since when do we not care about the minority? Also when it comes to medical decisions about my body the government shouldn't have a say in it.

On top of all that the effectiveness of the vaccine and it's longevity leave a lot to be desired. This ain't no polio silver bullet and the virus continues to mutate and break through even the most vaccinated populations.

If vaccinations should be made mandatory in a free society, it is solely due to the externality imposed by the unvaccinated on others (like you mentioned with ICU capacity, as well as general pathogen propagation), and avoiding that violation of the broader public's freedoms.

- 70% of population vaccinated

- and ICU beds clogging up because of unvaccinated

don't have to be considered separately. Instead, they are nice facts for making an informed decision about what to do next.

I think a distinction needs to be made between anti vaxxers and people who are just naive/“dumb”.

I have seen more of the later group. Which is why I’m surprised when someone here or in mainstream media says this has anything to do with a political side.

This distinction is useful IMO in creating sound policies.

It's a stronger statement to be vacccinated than to argue online for vaccinations.

And it's a stronger statement to not be vaccinated than to argue online against vaccinations.

I'm ashamed to admit that for a couple of months early last year I actually believed in the "pandemic". I was really confused because so many countries acted along the same lines. And then I had. It was a basically a flu though my sense of smell has been degraded since then. My parent (70+) had it this last fall, my father ended up in hospital (no ICU or anything drastic). Still, my mother had had a much closer call with a flu a few years ago.

Now the company I work for forces me between undertaking experimental medical procedures and getting much better at leetcode. You know what's funny? They require we get pricked and go back to the office in Jan. But even though everyone will be fully "vaccinated" they still demand masks in the office. You know what's really funny? Of all our offices across the globe (including China of all places) only American ones require "vaccination". Most others at worst recommend masks.

Speaking of "pandemics". You know what you'd see if there were one (aside from bodies lying in the streets)? How about hermetically sealed borders? Including our southern one. With the border patrol shooting anything approaching it with no warning. Last time I checked the news, they were not even demanding "vaccination" papers.

Also I kind of remember "masks are necessary for medical professionals only", "2 weeks to not overload the ICU", "it's just a pinch", ".. or two", " .. and probably a second booster", <you are here>, ".. possibly every 6 months?".

Also, do you recognize that the government peddling all this "pandemic" propaganda is the same we have seen in action for the last couple of years? They have spectacularly failed at their core business of maintaining rule of law and fighting wars. Well, at least not losing one more humiliatingly than the Soviets. Why would you trust your health to them? My body my rules, anyone?

In the 1870s, Japan had vaccine passports and kept logs of unvaccinated people in order to track them down. It was deemed a huge step forward in developing the country.

It’s interesting how some people today think mandatory vaccination is some massive, unprecedented destruction of freedom, when it’s historically nothing new and something that was essential to helping your country stay strong.

They’re also as irrelevant as bringing up European colonial horrors or ongoing American foreign intervention.

See eg https://items.ssrc.org/covid-19-and-the-social-sciences/covi...

> Unlike in Western countries, it is not possible to carry out lockdowns or forcibly isolate patients. Due to unchecked enforcement measures during World War II, there has been a tendency in Japan to strongly discourage the government from having strong coercive power, especially from interfering in ordinary people’s lives, so as not to repeat what happened during that period. The power of the Japanese government to intervene in individuals’ lives, even during an emergency, is constitutionally and legally limited. The Infectious Diseases Control Law, for example, was enacted with the utmost consideration for individuals’ human rights and it limits the public sector’s power to intervene in a person’s life, even for the purpose of infectious disease control. Besides, tracking infected people has many privacy considerations, and it is legally difficult in Japan to use GPS tracking or credit card histories to track activities, as it is being done in other Asian countries. The government’s ability to access individual citizens’ data is minimal, making infectious disease control difficult.

Everyone should take one for the team you say but do you know what the future holds for the team? You just trust emphatically what the early science says vs. waiting over time to see all of it's effects on a huge population? That and time is the true bellweather but we are forced guinea pigs to join the experiment or lose our livelihoods.

Can you tell me Why is the FDA want 55 years to process and release all the vaccine data they have.... shouldn't they be getting that out ASAP ... from Reuters (non-biased or sided media) https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/wait-what-fda-wants...

You either believe everything your govt says and the very early science says (time is the bellweather and the large population data that comes with it) or you live life on the fence questioning things before making the best decision for yourself or you go completely agaisnt the ones who just buy, soak up and believe everything their side says.

May I ask: how long have these apparent vaccination related symptoms been going on?

Signed angry Guinea pig

I reacted fairly strongly to all three of my Moderna jabs, the most recent was the day before Thanksgiving, and I basically slept all the next day and felt like crap the next two. But fortunately ever since alls well.

Luckily there are at least a few doctors who remain dedicated to science and the Hippocratic Oath and who are unbowed by political and social pressure. Some great resources here: https://aapsonline.org/covidpatientguide/

And if you can't find a rational doctor locally, they can arrange for telemedicine visits from doctors who aren't pretending the vax is the end all be all one size fits all solution to the exclusion of anything else.

Not if the decision violates the constitution.

As far as I know, the majority didn't "vote" for mandatory vaccines, even if the majority have received vaccines.

If you truly believe squashing the number of unvaccinated people will result in any significant benefit for the rest of us you are undeserving of the first place in this comment thread.

You could wait a few months for those vaccine laws to go into effect in Europe for proof. Or you could just look at the existing body of data that's staring at you in the face and are deciding to ignore because faulting someone else is one of the most primitive endorphins kicks you can get.

Signed: a fully vaccinated (and disgusted) user.

2. Research is indicating that in breakthrough infections to fully vaccinated people, the viral load is the same. [1]

3. The vaccines don't _prevent infection_ unlike the "classic" childhood vaccines. They are merely prophylactics that are incorrectly called vaccines to encourage people to get them and reduce hospitalization rate.

4. Everyone has their own individual level of risk. Healthy, young people have an infinitesimal rate of death from this virus compared to the old and infirm.

[1]: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

What do you mean by this?

I don't want to live in the same country as people like you who have no concern about human rights, freedom and individualism.

I don't want a majority controlled with biased media and internet to decide for my life.

And I suspect that's the problem they're aiming for to get an excuse to implement the police state solution.

It's a civic duty to be vaccinated. It's the rational, sane, and most personally and socially beneficial policy. Were this a game theory context we would be saying that getting the vaccine strictly dominates not getting the vaccine.

Are you still talking about Germany, because that's exactly the situation we have in the U.S., too. Same ratio, even.